Is cannabis campaign money well spent?

The first few frames of the TV advert launched this week towarn about the dangers of cannabis use made me wonder whether it would be worth finding a dealer and having a few puffs myself.

The central character, Simon, is joined by his friends,Giggles and Munchies, for a houseparty. The focus then shifts to his other mates, Panic Attacks, Paranoia andPukey, as the party descends into chaos. Perhaps I won’t bother then.

The £2.2m campaign coincides with the regrading ofcannabis to a Class B drug from Class C and carries the endline “The more youmess with cannabis, the more it can mess with your mind” and a contact numberfor Frank, the drugs advisory agency.

A couple of things occurred to me while watching this.Plainly, the creative side of a TV campaign does not happen overnight, so the government has had this ad in the pipeline for several months.

This begs the question, why have these experts at all? Forall I know, the experts may be wrong and the government correct in theirrespective analyses of the effects of cannabis. But the fact that preparationswere being made for an ad campaign to coincide with the reclassificationsuggests that the experts’ advice was always going to be ignored.

Another question is whether the 11- to 18-year-olds at whom thecampaign is targeted will listen to the message. Teenagers are not renownedfor their conformity and it smacks, if that is the right word in thecircumstances, of a government being seen to do something.

Perhaps the £2.2m would have been better spent on local drugprojects in areas prone to high levels of substance misuse. But these initiatives,by their very nature, are less grandiose and few of us would associate themwith government achievement.